Shakespeare, p.1
Shakespeare, page 1
Acclaim for Peter Ackroyd’s
Shakespeare
“Ackroyd—novelist, poet, critic, biographer, historian, omnivore—has been building toward this biography for decades. He knows the 16th century, and he knows the artistic soul. He gives us a Shakespeare rooted in Stratford, energized by London, shaped by theatrical contingencies, but able to transcend all of them through his innate perception and detachment.”
—The Miami Herald
“Extremely thorough and well-researched…. [Ackroyd] gives humanity to the portrait, in a somewhat Dickensian fashion.”
—The Telegraph
“The narrative flows so well that at times this biography reads as smoothly as a good work of historical fiction…. What makes Shakespeare: The Biography such an entertaining and enlightening read is the ability of Ackroyd to make his subjects and their world live and breathe on the page.” —The Denver Post
“Admirable…. [Ackroyd] is (as ‘the’ biographer of London) at his most vivid describing the feel of 16th-century metropolitan life.”—The New Statesman
“Fascinating doesn’t even begin to describe it. Ackroyd takes all the information we have on Shakespeare and puts it into new perspective. It unfurls like fast-moving fiction, is swaddled in atmosphere and is always engaging.” —The Plain Dealer
“A strikingly good read…. Ackroyd succeeds perhaps better than any other recent biographer in piecing together the scattered pieces of Shakespeare’s life for a general audience.”
—The San Diego Union Tribune
“Immensely enjoyable…. Ackroyd provides material for a thousand theses.” —The Providence Journal
“Magisterial… [with] a vivid grasp of the material elements of the daily life of long-lost England.” —The Nation
“Fascinating…. Rich…. A vivid and convincing biography.”
—The Manchester Evening News
Peter Ackroyd
Shakespeare
Peter Ackroyd is a bestselling writer of both fiction and nonfiction. His most recent books include The Lambs of London and J.M. W. Turner, the second biography in the Ackroyd Brief Lives series. He has also written full-scale biographies of Dickens, Blake, and Thomas More and the novels The Clerkenwell Tales, The Trial of Elizabeth Cree, Milton in America, and The Plato Papers. He has won the Whitbread Award for Biography, the Royal Society of Literature Award under the William Heinemann Bequest (jointly), the Somerset Maugham Award, the South Bank Award for Literature, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and The Guardian fiction prize. He lives in London.
Also by Peter Ackroyd
FICTION
The Great Fire of London
The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde
Hawksmoor
Chatterton
First Light
English Music
The House of Doctor Dee
Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem
Milton in America
The Plato Papers
The Clerkenwell Tales
NONFICTION
Dressing Up: Transvestism and Drag: The History of an Obsession
London: The Biography
Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination
BIOGRAPHY
Ezra Pound and His World
T.S. Eliot
Dickens
Blake
The Life of Thomas More
POETRY
Ouch!
The Diversions of Purley
CRITICISM
Notes for a New Culture
The Collection: Journalism, Reviews, Essays, Short Stories, Lectures
(edited by Thomas Wright)
Contents
Author’s note
Stratford-Upon-Avon
1 There Was a Starre Daunst, and Vnder That Was I Borne
2 Shee Is My Essence
3 Dost Thou Loue Pictures?
4 For Where Thou Art, There Is the World It Selfe
5 Tell Me This: Who Begot Thee?
6 A Witty Mother, Witlesse Else Her Sonne
7 But This Is Worshipfull Society
8 I Am a Kind of Burre, I Shal Sticke
9 This Prettie Lad Will Proue Our Countries Blisse
10 What Sees Thou There?
11 I Sommon Up Remembrance of Things Past
12 A Nowne and a Verbe and Such Abhominable Wordes
13 That’s Not So Good Now
14 Of Such a Mery Nimble Stiring Spirit
15 At Your Employment, at Your Seruice Sir
16 Before I Know My Selfe, Seeke Not to Know Me
17 I Can See a Church by Day-Light
The Queen’s Men
18 To Tell Thee Plaine, I Ayme to Lye with Thee
19 This Way for Me
Lord Strange’s Men
20 To Morrow, Toward London
21 The Spirit of the Time Shall Teach Me Speed
22 There’s Many a Beast Then in a Populous City
23 Sir I Shall Study Deserving
24 I Will Not Be Slack to Play My Part in Fortunes Pageant
25 As in a Theatre, Whence They Gape and Point
26 This Keene Incounter of Our Wits
27 My Sallad Dayes 149
28 I See Sir, You Are Eaten Vp with Passion
29 Why Should I Not Now Have the Like Successes?
30 O Barbarous and Bloody Spectacle
31 Ile Neuer Pawse Againe, Neuer Stand Still
The Earl of Pembroke’s Men
32 Among the Buzzing Pleased Multitude
33 An’t Please Your Honor, Players
34 They Thought It Good You Heare a Play
35 There’s a Great Spirit Gone, Thus Did I Desire It
36 That Hath a Mint of Phrases in His Braine
The Lord Chamberlain’s Men
37 Stay, Goe, Doe What You Will
38 We Few, We Happy Few, We Band of Brothers
39 Lord How Art Thou Changed
40 Bid Me Discourse, I Will Inchaunt Thine Eare
41 Doth Rauish Like Inchaunting Harmonie
42 To Fill the World with Words
43 See, See, They Ioyne, Embrace, and Seeme to Kisse
44 What Zeale, What Furie, Hath Inspirde Thee Now?
45 Thus Leaning on Mine Elbow I Begin
46 So Musicall a Discord, Such Sweete Thunder
47 I Vnderstand a Fury in Your Words
48 So Shaken as We Are, So Wan with Care
49 Ah, No, No, No, It Is Mine Onely Sonne
50 What Are You? A Gentleman
51 His Companies Vnletter’d, Rude, and Shallow
52 You Haue Not the Booke of Riddles About You, Haue You?
53 You Would Plucke Out the Hart of My Mistery
54 And to Be Short, What Not, That’s Sweete and Happie
New Place
55 Therefore Am I of an Honourable House
56 Pirates May Make Cheape Penyworths of Their Pillage
57 No More Words, We Beseech You
58 A Loyall, Iust and Vpright Gentleman
The Globe
59 A Pretty Plot, Well Chosen to Build Vpon
60 Thou Knowest My Lodging, Get Me Inke and Paper
61 This Wide and Vniuersall Theatre
62 Then Let the Trumpets Sound
63 Why There You Toucht the Life of Our Designe
64 See How the Giddy Multitude Doe Point
65 And Here We Wander in Illusions
66 Sweete Smoke of Rhetorike
67 Well Bandied Both, a Set of Wit Well Played
68 Now, One the Better; Then, Another Best
69 I Must Become a Borrower of the Night
70 Tut I Am in Their Bosomes
71 And So in Spite of Death Thou Doest Suruiue
72 I Am (Quoth He) Expected of My Friends
73 My Lord This Is But the Play, Theyre But in Iest
The King’s Men
74 Hee Is Something Peeuish That Way
75 I, But the Case Is Alter’d
76 I Will a Round Unvarnish’d Tale Deliuer
77 Why, Sir, What’s Your Conceit in That?
78 The Bitter Disposition of the Time
79 Oh You Go Farre
80 My Life Hath in This Line Some Interest
81 That Strain Agen, It Had a Dying Fall
Black friars
82 As in a Theatre the Eies of Men
83 And Sorrow Ebs, Being Blown with Wind of Words
84 And Beautie Making Beautifull Old Rime
85 So There’s My Riddle, One That’s Dead Is Quicke
86 When Men Were Fond, I Smild, and Wondred How
87 Let Time Shape, and There an End
88 I Haue Not Deseru’d This
89 My Selfe Am Strook in Yeares I Must Confesse
90 The Wheele Is Come Full Circle I Am Heere
91 To Heare the Story of Your Life
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Author’s Note
Certain questions of nomenclature arise. The earliest publications of Shakespeare’s plays took the form of quartos or of the Folio. The quartos, as their name implies, were small editions of one play characteristically issued several years after its first production. Some of the more popular plays were reprinted in quarto many times, whereas others were not published at all. About half of Shakespeare’s plays were printed during his lifetime by this means. The results are good, clumsy or indifferent. There has been a division made between “good quartos” and “bad quartos,” although the latter should really be known as “problem quartos
The earliest biographical references to Shakespeare deserve mentioning. There are allusions and references in various published sources, during his lifetime, but there were no serious descriptions or assessments of his plays. Ben Jonson ventured a brief account in Timber: or, Discoveries Made upon Men and Matter (1641) and some biographical notes were composed by John Aubrey without being published in his lifetime. The first extended biography was Nicholas Rowe’s prefatory Life in Jacob Tonson’s edition of the Works of Shakespeare (1709), and this was followed by the various surmises of eighteenth-century antiquarians and scholars such as Samuel Ireland and Edmond Malone. The vogue for Shakespearean biography itself arose in the mid- to late nineteenth century, with the publication of Edward Dowden’s Shakespeare: A Critical Study of His Mind and Art (the first edition of which was published in 1875), and has not abated since.
Part I
Stratford-upon-Avon
The title page of this edition of The Bishops’ Bible shows the enthroned Queen Elizabeth I surrounded by the female personifications of Justice, Mercy (Temperance), Prudence and Fortitude. During his schoolboy years, Shakespeare would have become familiar with the vigorous language of the Bible recently translated into English.
CHAPTER 1
There Was a Starre Daunst, and Vnder That Was I Borne
William Shakespeare is popularly supposed to have been born on 23 April 1564, or St. George’s Day. The date may in fact have been 21 April or 22 April, but the coincidence of the national festival is at least appropriate.
When he emerged from the womb into the world of time, with the assistance of a midwife, an infant of the sixteenth century was washed and then “swaddled” by being wrapped tightly in soft cloth. Then he was carried downstairs in order to be presented to the father. After this ritual greeting, he was taken back to the birth-chamber, still warm and dark, where he was laid beside the mother. She was meant to “draw to her all the diseases from the child,”1 before her infant was put in a cradle. A small portion of butter and honey was usually placed in the baby’s mouth. It was the custom in Warwickshire to give the suckling child hare’s brains reduced to jelly.
The date of Shakespeare’s christening, unlike that of his birth, is exactly known: he was baptised in the Church of the Holy Trinity, in Stratford, on Wednesday 26 April 1564. In the register of that church, the parish clerk has written Guilelmus filius Johannes Shakespere; he slipped in his Latin, and should have written Johannis.
The infant Shakespeare was carried by his father from his birthplace in Henley Street down the High Street and Church Street into the church itself. The mother was never present at the baptism. John Shakespeare and his newborn son would have been accompanied by the godparents, who were otherwise known as “god-sips” or “gossips.” On this occasion the godfather was William Smith, a haberdasher and neighbour in Henley Street. The name of the infant was given before he was dipped in the font and the sign of the cross marked upon his forehead. At the font the gossips were exhorted to make sure that William Shakespeare heard sermons and learned the creed as well as the Lord’s Prayer “in the English tongue.” After the baptism a piece of white linen cloth was placed on the head of the child, and remained there until the mother had been “churched” or purified; it was called the “chrisom cloth” and, if the infant died within a month, was used as a shroud. The ceremony of the reformed Anglican faith, in the time of Elizabeth, still favoured the presentation of apostle-spoons or christening shirts to the infant, given by the gossips, and the consumption of a christening cake in celebration. They were, after all, celebrating the saving of young William Shakespeare for eternity.
Of his earthly life there was much less certainty. In the sixteenth century, the mortality of the newly born was high. Nine per cent died within a week of birth, and a further 11 per cent before they were a month old;2 in the decade of Shakespeare’s own birth there were in Stratford 62.8 average annual baptisms and 42.8 average annual child burials.3 You had to be tough, or from a relatively prosperous family, to survive the odds. It is likely that Shakespeare had both of these advantages.
Once the dangers of childhood had been surmounted, there was a further difficulty. The average lifespan of an adult male was forty-seven years. Since Shakespeare’s parents were by this standard long-lived, he may have hoped to emulate their example. But he survived only six years beyond the average span. Something had wearied him. Since in London the average life expectancy was only thirty-five years in the more affluent parishes, and twenty-five years in the poorer areas, it may have been the city that killed him. But this roll-call of death had one necessary consequence. Half of the population were under the age of twenty. It was a youthful culture, with all the vigour and ambition of early life. London itself was perpetually young.
The first test of Shakespeare’s own vigour came only three months after his birth. In the parish register of 11 July 1564, beside the record of the burial of a weaver’s young apprentice from the High Street, was written: Hic incipit pestis. Here begins the plague. In a period of six months some 237 residents of Stratford died, more than a tenth of its population; a family of four expired on the same side of Henley Street as the Shakespeares. But the Shakespeares survived. Perhaps the mother and her newborn son escaped to her old family home in the neighbouring hamlet of Wilmcote, and stayed there until the peril had passed. Only those who remained in the town succumbed to the infection.
The parents, if not the child, suffered fear and trembling. They had already lost two daughters, both of whom had died in earliest infancy, and the care devoted to their first-born son must have been close and intense. Such children tend to be confident and resilient in later life. They feel themselves to be in some sense blessed and protected from the hardships of the world. It is perhaps worth remarking that Shakespeare never contracted the plague that often raged through London. But we can also see the lineaments of that fortunate son in the character of the land from which he came.
CHAPTER 2
Shee Is My Essence
Warwickshire was often described as primeval, and contours of ancient time can indeed be glimpsed in the lie of this territory and its now denuded hills. It has also been depicted as the heart or the navel of England, with the clear implication that Shakespeare himself embodies some central national worth. He is central to the centre, the core or source of Englishness itself.
The countryside around Stratford was divided into two swathes. To the north lay the Forest of Arden, the remains of the ancient forest that covered the Midlands; these tracts were known as the Wealden. The notion of the forest may suggest uninterrupted woodland, but that was not the case in the sixteenth century. The Forest of Arden itself included sheep farms and farmsteads, meadows and pastures, wastes and intermittent woods; in this area the houses were not linked conveniently in lanes or streets but in the words of an Elizabethan topographer, William Harrison, “stand scattered abroad, each one dwelling in the midst of his own occupying.”1 By the time Shakespeare wandered through Arden the woods themselves were steadily being reduced by the demand for timber in building new houses; it required between sixty and eighty trees to erect a house. The forest was being stripped, too, for mining and subsistence farming. In his survey of the region, for his Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine of 1611, John Speed noticed “great and notable destruction of wood.” There never has been a sylvan paradise in England. It is always being destroyed.
